


Petals Unfurled

by qwanderer



Series: cherry trees can grow in space [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Body Horror, M/M, MY LOVE FOR PIDGE CANNOT BE RESTRAINED, POV Pidge | Katie Holt, S6 Spoilers, also there's a bit of, because Pidge, but it's also kinda more like a normal episode, in relation to Shiro's arm, outside perspective, this was going to be a sheith-centric fic and I hope it kinda still is?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-04 19:42:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15154256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: Krolia treated Shiro like a son, too. Shiro had a boyfriend, an awesome dog, a mom, and Black to help him. He'd be okay.Pidge told herself that she was doing everything she could for Shiro now. She pushed away the guilt for not investigating further when Shiro had had those strange headaches, and especially after he'd completely flaked out on her while she was trying to get the shielding generator up and running again.It had been a busy time. Well. Except the chunk of it they'd spent playing the Altean version of a tabletop RPG.Pidge sighed.





	Petals Unfurled

**Author's Note:**

> This wasn't supposed to be a story about Pidge, but... *shrugs* it's a story about EVERYBODY now

The latest planet they'd landed on on their journey to Earth had insisted on throwing a feast for the Paladins of Voltron. Which was great. Being in a crowd always made Lance and Coran happy. Hunk loved being able to chat about new food with new people. Seeing the work Voltron had been doing always seemed to encourage Romelle. Allura could put her diplomatic skills to use. Keith's wolf loved investigating new smells, and that kept Keith and Krolia in high spirits. 

Pidge looked at Shiro. He'd been trying to make light of his current lack of a right hand, but it had never been more obvious that he was having problems adapting. Hunk had mentioned that Shiro had mostly been subsisting on food goo, which wasn't a problem. It seemed to make a perfectly good primary food source for all kinds of species. But it probably wasn't a choice made with taste preferences in mind. 

After a third near-fumble in as many minutes, Shiro stood to excuse himself. Keith rose too, but Shiro shook his head. "One of the Black Paladins should be here," he said. "Black is the head of Voltron." 

Keith looked like he wanted to argue, but then one of their hosts waylaid him with a question about strategy, and Keith sighed and turned to answer. Shiro walked off, maybe trying to find a quiet place. 

Keith looked after him worriedly, distracted from the conversation. Pidge stood, catching Keith's eye before she went after Shiro. Keith's shoulders seemed to relax just a little. 

Pidge found Shiro on a stone window seat facing out to a dark courtyard. He was looking up at the stars. 

"Hey," she said, getting his attention before she sat next to him. "You okay?" 

"I'm fine," he said heavily. "You can go back to the party. I just needed some air." 

"Eh," she said. "I already did the science exchange thing with these guys earlier. Diplomatic talk's not really my specialty." 

Shiro just hummed thoughtfully, eyes still on the sky outside. 

"You know I could put a prosthesis together for you, right, Shiro?" she asked. 

He sighed in response, turning so he was facing her but still not really looking at her. "I don't know if I'm ready for that," he said. "I never trusted my Galra arm, and in the end, I was kind of right not to." His smile was not at all happy. 

Pidge's face twisted up, half in frustration and half in agreement with his disgust. "Neither did I, you know. Kinda how I saved all of us from certain doom when it infected the Castle systems." She leaned forward a little, trying to catch Shiro's eye. "This? This would be me. So you'd know it's secure. Right?" 

It was a long moment before Shiro answered, "Yeah, Pidge. I know." 

He didn't say any more than that. Pidge was bursting with the need to try and convince him. But that wasn't necessarily what he needed. One of the things Pidge had always appreciated about Shiro was the way he stood by and allowed her to stew in her frustration if she damn well felt like stewing in her frustration. He didn't try to talk her out of it. And he looked like he was in that kind of mood now. 

"But yeah, I get it," she said. "It's fine if you're not ready. I'll just keep planning. If that's okay." 

He raised his eyebrows at her. "I don't think there's any way to stop you from planning." 

Pidge crossed her arms. "Well, in general, no, but with this? You give the word, I won't give it another thought." 

Shiro's eyes were warm. "You go ahead and plan all you want, Katie," he told her. 

She looked askance at him. "You know that's weird, right?" she asked. "Everyone except my dad calls me Pidge now. What if I just up and started calling you Takashi?" 

"That would be weird," Shiro admitted. "I just remember how Matt used to say how much you hated Pidge. Why'd he call you that, anyway?" 

"Well," Pidge said, suddenly not sure she wanted to tell this story after all, "at first it was because I was being an annoying little sister and distracting him from his homework, and he compared me to those 'junk pigeons' that almost stopped a couple of scientists from noticing evidence of the Big Bang. But then later, he told me a story about how Nikola Tesla's best friend in the whole world was a little white pigeon. And that made it... kind of okay. It wasn't until he was leaving that I kind of thought... pigeons carry messages so far, and they always find their way home again. I couldn't think of anything better to be." 

Shiro smiled, but his look was a little distant. "You always find a way to get us out of trouble," he said. "And now we're going home." He looked out at the stars. 

"Just for a little bit," Pidge told him. "We're still going to be a team." 

Raising his arm, Shiro looked at his hand, then just to the side of it, where his other hand would have been. "I don't know," he said. "I'm not sure how I fit, right now. Keith's been a good Black Paladin." 

"More people who can do the job is always good," Pidge said. "The best people still sometimes need backup. My dad always told me that when I got discouraged studying to get into the Garrison. We can't predict what's gonna happen. There are so many times we've just needed another pair of hands - sorry, I mean, you know what I mean. Someone in the right place at the right time to make all the difference." 

Shiro huffed a laugh. "Your dad's a smart man," he said. Then he looked at Pidge, truly focusing on her for the first time in the conversation. "And if you think one more pair of hands is what you need most? Well, maybe that's what I should let myself be." 

Pidge blinked. "Are you..." she began, trying to rein in the excited squeak in her voice. "Are you sure about this, Shiro? It's your call." 

"Yeah," Shiro said. "I trust you. Still working on myself, but I trust you." 

She leapt up and threw her arms around his neck. "Thank you," she said. She leaned back to grin at him. "It's gonna be so cool, I promise! You won't regret this!" 

Shiro was smiling when she left. She hoped he really meant it, but her brain was already a thousand miles away, planning and plotting and designing a new arm for Shiro. 

* * *

There were so many ways to go about it. Obviously she'd studied Shiro's Galra arm, and a superficial similarity in form, strength, weight, and control scheme would all benefit Shiro in adjusting to anything new. But beyond that, there was a universe full of possibilities. 

Even in terms of translating signals from the human brain to machinery, they didn't just have the Galra arm as a single example. There was also the Olkari techno-organic interface technology, and the Altean alchemy that allowed them to control and reshape their bayards. 

Pidge was partial to the Olkari tech, herself, but then she had been the only one to actually make the interface work. Under the circumstances, she thought some kind of hybrid - based on the Galra tech at the nerves and then transitioning to something more Olkari and Altean for the internal workings of the arm - might be the best choice. 

She sat down with a tablet outside Yellow, and began working on the necessary code. When Hunk came in from the party, she handed it to him and said, "Hey, engineer, got some work for you here." 

"What, now?" he whined. "But..." And then he actually caught sight of what was on the tablet. "Holy shit. Is this an Olkari-Galra hybrid prosthetic?" 

"And Altean, too, if I can make that work. The bayards are so versatile. That's something that'd come in handy for Shiro to have built in, especially if Keith stays with Black." 

"Can you do that?" Hunk asked. "I thought you needed Altean alchemy for that kind of reactive tech. Are we getting Allura in on this? 'Cause, I mean, I'm trying not to be petty about it but the last time Allura was doing an alchemical engineering project, she kinda shut us out." 

Pidge scrunched her mouth to one side. "That is kinda petty. You know that was all Lotor's idea." 

"Yeah," Hunk said heavily. "So we're bringing her in?" 

"Not necessarily," Pidge said. "I mean, I trust Allura, but I promised Shiro that the programming in this arm would all be me. It's gotta be double and triple-secure. I have to understand everything that goes into it. Which would mean no alchemy, except... I've been studying these puffballs I brought back from the junk nebula. And they seem to have access to a set of abilities that's a very simple variation of Altean alchemy." 

"Whoa," Hunk said. 

"Yeah, it's pretty fascinating, isn't it? So what I'm thinking is, we get their help to infuse that very simple alchemy into one physical element of the arm, letting it change shape freely and discharge energy in any pattern across its surface, like a bayard. But the rest, the core, will be Olkari protein-based tech that will act and feel as close to the original human arm as we can make it - but of course be much stronger and more durable." 

"Of course," Hunk agreed. "So I'm guessing what you need from me is design specs for the physical side of things, just a basic outline, then you can code the Olkari tech to match up with it?" He frowned. "So how are we gonna do, you know, the actual construction?" 

Pidge grinned. "So you remember those flowers from the Olkari armory?" She put emphasis on that last word, and then paused to chuckle at her own joke. Hunk just raised his eyebrows and tried not to look amused. "Anyway," Pidge continued, "they gave me some seeds and I think I can reprogram them to build whatever we want." 

"Sweet," said Hunk. "Let me know if you want help growing it, I've been composting so I could maybe try growing more fresh food - not that there's much room in the lions for that, but, you know." 

"The less we have," she agreed, "the harder we hang on to what we do." 

"Yeah," he said. "Okay, I'll get on this. Let me know what kind of precision you can use with the protein tech." 

* * *

The next morning, they all took the opportunity for a few last breaths of fresh air before being shut up in their lions again for the next leg of the journey. 

"So about the project we were discussing yesterday," Pidge said to Shiro, who nodded for her to continue. "I have a basic idea of what I want to do and Hunk and I are working on the initial phases of execution but there are a few things I need to go over with you first before we finalize everything." 

"Okay, what is it?" he asked. 

Pidge studied him closely as she said, "Well, I guess first, are you still up for this?" 

Shiro looked at Keith. Keith looked back, almost but not quite without expression. 

Keith looked so... solid, since he'd gotten back from his last Marmora mission. Not just physically (although if she was being honest with herself, Pidge had had a few moments of resentment over that - she was used to being the smallest of the paladins, but she wasn't used to being the smallest by quite so _much._ ). But he was also... in command of himself, in a way he hadn't been. 

Pidge remembered forming Voltron with him again, and how natural it had seemed to let Keith command them, even though he hadn't piloted Black in months, or even been on the castle at all. Yes, it was partly because they all wanted to save Shiro, and after that, to defeat Lotor. But it was also partly this. 

"It's your choice," Keith told Shiro. "Either way, you'll always be a paladin." 

Pidge had tried her best to tell Shiro the same things, but she understood that there were people whose words just carried more weight. Her dad was one of those people for both of them. Shiro had always been one of those people to Keith. It had always gone both ways to some extent, but now it was obvious that Keith knew how much weight his words carried with Shiro, and he bore the responsibility steadily. 

Shiro looked back to Pidge. "I want this," he said. "I want to be ready to do whatever I can for the team." 

Pidge took a breath, grateful for that, but bracing herself for the next question. 

"So I've been thinking about the transition point," Pidge said. "I'll do a few extra scans just to be sure, but as far as I can tell, the last bit of the Galra arm you have is all interface and structure. No microchips, no quintessence storage, no transmitters, nothing with a life of its own and nothing that can store information or communicate to anything else outside your body. The simplest thing would be to keep most of it. Especially since I'm not comfortable removing it myself." 

Shiro's eyes were drawn to the metallic stump. 

"It's going to be okay," Keith told him. "I've seen enough of the future to know that this isn't going to be the thing that brings us down. Pidge knows what she's doing." 

"Okay," Shiro said. "I can deal with that." 

"Great," said Pidge. "I can program the Olkari armory flower seed right now, and we can plant it before we leave. The forest tech from Olkarion is pretty speedy to grow. It should be ready before we reach our next stop." 

Shiro blinked. "That quickly?" 

Pidge smirked. "This is what I do." 

* * *

It would take a week in their lions to get to the next planned stop, which Allura remembered as an old Altean science outpost, but which had no inhabitants according to the latest Galra star maps. 

Pidge was eager to get there, as there might be equipment or research there that could be used to get them back to Earth faster. Without the Castle's teludav, it would take months, unless they found another way to travel faster. 

It wasn't uncommon for Black's comms to be muted, but Pidge chatted with the others about how the Olkari flower was growing and what else it might need. Allura knew some basics about growing flowers on various planets. Hunk knew the composition of his compost blend and the various ways it could be adjusted. Lance was the one who'd actually grown up on a farm, so a lot of questions actually came back to him. But generally the Olkari flower took care of itself, and as long as Pidge checked in with it every few hours, it could let her know what it needed. 

That left Pidge plenty of time to wonder what they'd encounter at the old science outpost, and also how things were going in Black. 

The black paladins weren't alone, even with their comms muted. Keith had come back from his mission with his mom and a dog, and they seemed like a nice normal family, even with all the alien markings, purple skin, and teleportation. 

Pidge liked Krolia, but was kind of glad she tended to keep to herself other than the inhabitants of Black. Just seeing her interact with Keith gave Pidge a sharp stab of homesickness for her own mother, every time. 

Krolia treated Shiro like a son, too. Shiro had a boyfriend, an awesome dog, a mom, and Black to help him. He'd be okay. 

Pidge told herself that she was doing everything she could for Shiro now. She pushed away the guilt for not investigating further when Shiro had had those strange headaches, and especially after he'd completely flaked out on her while she was trying to get the shielding generator up and running again. 

It had been a busy time. Well. Except the chunk of it they'd spent playing the Altean version of a tabletop RPG. 

Pidge sighed. 

"Hey, you okay, Pidge?" Lance asked. 

"Yeah, I'm just... worried," she answered. 

"What'd the plant do this time?" he asked. "Another leaf fall off?" 

Pidge growled. "Oh, go milk your cow, farm boy," she told him, and muted Green's comms. 

* * *

When Pidge brought the plant out of Green, Shiro eyed it with... not quite suspicion, but... wariness. 

"Just lemme know when you're ready," Pidge told him lightly. "It's all set to go, but the plant will keep. We could finish our research here first, or I could keep it growing until the next time we stop?" 

The cosmic wolf poofed into place under Shiro's left hand, leaning up into his touch and letting Shiro tangle his fingers in its hair. Keith looked on from a few steps away, not pushing. 

Shiro closed his eyes, and took a breath. "No," he said. "Let's do this now." 

"Okay," Pidge said, approaching with the potted plant in her arms. The huge purplish flower dwarfed the pot they'd put it in, and rose up to the height of Pidge's head. "Now, it's just like the plants on Olkarion - you just line up in the right place, and the plant will assemble its construction around you. So just - stretch out as far as you can towards it, and try not to jerk away when it reaches for you." 

That little speech did not look like it made Shiro any more comfortable, but he did reach out, and he didn't flinch when brown tendrils of protein strands began to weave between the remaining pieces of Galran metal, and latch on. 

The tendrils smoothed out into a near-perfect facsimile of a human arm, a little darker than Shiro's other one, only broken by the band of metal at his shoulder and one more across the back of his hand. 

The petals withdrew, and Pidge put the plant down. Shiro just stared at his arm. 

"Wow," Keith said, approaching now to look on in fascination at the new arm. "This is incredible. It looks like skin. Is it...?" 

"No, it's Olkari protein tech," Pidge answered, "similar to what their insect bots are made out of. A lot more durable. But it should react more like skin in a lot of ways than his previous arm did." 

"Can I...?" Keith asked, fingers hovering over the arm. 

Shiro's eybrows drew together, and he pulled his gaze away from the arm to look at Pidge. Pidge gave him a reassuring nod. Everything had gone as planned. It was safe. 

"Yeah," Shiro said, voice cracking slightly. 

Keith ran a reverent hand down Shiro's forearm, and Pidge could swear she saw Shiro shiver. 

"What's this?" Keith asked, cupping Shiro's hand in both of his own and running his thumbs across the silver-white band of metal that ran across the back of Shiro's hand, just below his wrist. 

"It's... basically a built-in bayard?" Pidge said. "I figured you didn't want any more Galra tech than necessary, but I wanted to put in something cool to fight with. You should be able to find something to do with it that works with your existing styles. The puffballs helped me put it in, but the code was all mine. They just charged up the plant with their energy." 

Shiro nodded like he understood what that meant. Heck, he'd been part of Black for months. Maybe he did understand what that meant. 

Then Shiro took a shuddering breath, and twined his fingers with Keith's. Keith made a startled, almost hurt sound, and took a step closer to Shiro. 

Pidge left the plant to get some sun and the black paladins to enjoy Shiro's new arm, and wandered off to get a look at the old facility that was the reason they'd decided to land here in the first place. 

This time, she was pretty sure she'd done good. 

* * *

"Hey Hunk," Pidge called as she passed the others. "It worked! We did it! Wanna celebrate by exploring a creepy old abandoned science outpost?" 

Hunk looked at the darkened, ancient building, and then at Keith and Shiro, who were now making out on the grass, oblivious to anyone else, then back at the building, then back at the black paladins. Then he shrugged. "Yeah, sure," he said. 

The rooms full of machinery were dark. Normally a couple of puffballs with their glowing face markings would have trailed along, giving them light to see by, but they were tired out from working on Shiro's arm and were sleeping deeply in Green's back compartment. Pidge just used a flashlight. 

"I've been wondering," Pidge said as they walked. "You know how I was able to incorporate the Castle's cloaking technology into Green's systems, and then give them to Voltron as a whole?" 

"Yeah," Hunk said expectantly. 

"Well, if we can't find what we need to build another teludav, or at least recreate the hyperjump technology the Galra use, maybe I could figure out the Black Lion's thing it does to get places super fast and apply that to the whole of Voltron?" 

"You think you could do that?" Hunk asked. "That's... that stuff's not engineering. Not really. That's pure Altean hocus pocus. You know that, right?" 

Pidge frowned. "You know, when I bonded more with the Green Lion on Olkarion, I saw everything differently. Everything is governed by math and physics, just sometimes math and physics we don't understand yet. And since I've been studying the puffballs, I'm getting a lot closer to understanding the rules that govern alchemy. I probably won't ever _feel_ it the way Allura does, but that doesn't mean I can never leverage those rules to my advantage." 

"Huh," said Hunk. "Hadn't thought about it like that." 

Pidge's eyes roved over more and more unfamiliar tech. "I don't know if everything here is Altean," she said. "There's all kinds of interesting equipment here but I have no idea what it does. A lot of it doesn't look like anything from the Castle _or_ anything we've seen from the Galra." 

"Yeah," said Hunk. "You're right. So where do we wanna start?" 

"Nothing has power right now," Pidge mused. "I guess the fastest way to see what's what would be to restore power to the base, so we can get anything we're interested in up an running without having to jury-rig a power source." 

"All right, let's see what we can do to fix a power plant that's tens of thousands of years old," Hunk agreed readily enough, rolling up his sleeves. 

* * *

"Aha!" Hunk said, reconnecting the one last stray plug that they had been searching for. "Should be able to start it up now, Pidge." 

"All right, let's do this!" Pidge pressed the start button on the main console. 

The generator started up, and all around them, panels began to glow. 

The doors to the generator room slammed shut, and red lights began to flash. 

"Oops," said Pidge. 

Hunk looked frantically around them. "Wait, what just happened?" 

"Oh shit," Pidge said. "Ohh shit, the outpost is on lockdown. Someone must have cut the power to the base while it was under attack and then pried the doors open. So the minute the power came back on - " 

"Quiznak," Hunk said. 

Pidge grabbed her helmet and slammed it on her head. "Hey guys, we hit a snag down here." 

"Really, you think?" Lance replied. "Everyone, get inside the lions! Those turrets look like they're about to go hot!" 

"Quiznak," Pidge agreed. "Okay, we're shut up in the generator room. There isn't much access to anything else from here, even assuming I'm reading these consoles right. There should be an emergency override for these doors, but it looks like whoever pried them open to disable the generator really did a number on them, so it might take some time." Mentally she kicked herself for her lack of awareness. For seeing things but not processing them or dealing with them until it was too late. 

There was the sound of Shiro's arm/bayard activating, and then he told Keith, "Go, get Black in the air. I'll cover you." 

Keith growled in response. "If I'm gonna pilot Black, I'm the leader. You get that, right?" 

"Yes, Sir," Shiro said, half-teasing. "You have a better idea, Sir?" 

"Stop that, I'm going," Keith grumbled. 

It was good to hear them joking with each other again. 

"Red's in the air and ready to fight," Lance said. "We got a plan?" 

"What do we know?" Shiro asked. 

"These are not Altean defenses," Allura said from Blue. "Someone used this base after we lost it. I won't be able to tell you much." 

Pidge scrambled to deduce anything that could be useful to the other paladins, even as she and Hunk pried open the door panel and searched for a way to override. "A lot of what's in here is still Altean," she said. "The generator was. The fortifications seem to be sort of grafted on top. Not quite separate systems, but close." 

"The turrets are heavily shielded," Lance said. "I don't think these lasers are going to do much." 

"Everyone still on the ground," Keith said, "get behind Yellow!" 

"We might need Voltron," Coran objected. "Someone has to try for Green." 

"Yeah," said Keith, "but Pidge is trapped and Green's shielding isn't exactly the heaviest." 

"She's built for stealth," Pidge agreed. Her fingers itched to be on the controls she knew so well. 

"Green's closer to me anyway," she heard Romelle say. "I'm going." 

"Be careful!" Shiro told her. 

"Uh, guys?" said Lance. "One of the turrets just, like, stood up and started walking. That... might be a problem." 

"Is there any way to form Voltron without Hunk and Pidge?" Krolia asked. 

"I'm flying!" Romelle cried. "I'm flying the Green Lion!" 

Hunk looked at Pidge, silently asking how she felt about that. 

Pidge felt about seven tons lighter. She grinned. "She's a good girl," she told Romelle. "Treat her well and she'll do the same for you. Now give those robots hell." 

"My time has come," Coran said. "Come on, Yellow, Voltron needs us." There was a moment of silence. "Quiznak," Coran muttered. "We don't have time for this. Who's next?" 

"Krolia?" Shiro asked. 

She sighed. "Why not?" she asked. "It's just a ship, right?" 

This time there wasn't silence, but instead a flurry of yelling from Keith, Lance, Allura and Romelle. The next they knew of what was happening with Yellow, Pidge and Hunk could hear Shiro whispering to it. 

"Keith can handle Black. We both know he can. He's brilliant. He's saved me so many times and now he needs help. Please. I know I'm not Hunk but I'm here. I'm ready. I'm a willing pair of hands. Let me pilot you." 

There was silence for a moment, and then the humming of Yellow's machinery, and then Shiro's voice, now loud and clear. 

"Yellow's in the air." 

Pidge felt like she was flying, too. She heard Allura's long-ago words in her head like it was yesterday. 

_The Yellow Lion is caring and kind. Its pilot is one who puts the needs of others above his own. His heart must be mighty. As the leg of Voltron, you will lift the team up and hold them together._

She smirked at Hunk. Hunk inclined his head, agreeing with her point. If it had to be someone other than Hunk, of course it was Shiro. 

Keith, from Black, called, "Then let's form Voltron!" 

Pidge found she could feel it in her bones when Voltron came together, even if she wasn't in the pilot's seat. Something in the fabric of the universe sang with it. 

She was probably just imagining it. But then again, Allura could feel the workings of Altean alchemy. Why not Pidge? Maybe it just took practice. 

Keith's voice of command was just as strong as it had been ever since he'd come back. There were only a couple of times when Shiro accidentally gave an order, and then had to walk it back to a suggestion. 

With Voltron's sword, they took down the automated defenses pretty quickly. Then between all of them working together, they pried open the outpost and shut down the alerts. 

Pidge and Hunk booked it out of there and collapsed on the grass, away from the new network of laser scars and robot wreckage. The others exited the lions to join them. 

"Sorry about that," Pidge told everyone. "Should have been more careful with the unknown alien tech." 

Keith looked to Shiro, but Shiro just looked back at Keith, a slight tilt of his head deferring to the most recent black paladin. 

"Yeah, you should have," Keith said, "but we're all fine. We learned something about this planet, and about our lions. We can do better next time." 

Shiro stepped up beside him, but it was just to take his hand again, squeezing it tight. Keith turned to face him. 

"So, Yellow, huh?" he said. "What was that like?" 

"It was... actually kind of... nice," Shiro replied. "Yellow has a completely different personality. It's very mellow." 

"You look happy," Keith said softly. 

Shiro hummed in agreement. "It was weird not to be in charge but... not bad. It was stranger not to be in Black. Black was home for so long. For a while, Black was all I had. And that wasn't great." 

Pidge wondered what it must have been like to be dead. Black had a lot of death going on, she thought. Yellow was more about life. About holding position and continuing to live. Yellow was... an antidote. 

After all, Hunk was the only one of them who could say "Vrepit Sa" unironically and not feel _really weird_ about it. 

Shiro frowned thoughtfully. "I think I needed Yellow more than Yellow needed me." 

Hunk shrugged, smiling. "Hey, man, sometimes Yellow's just like that." 

"So... you think we can make this work?" Lance asked. "The whole, five lions, seven paladins thing?" 

"I think it's a good thing," Allura said. "We all have backup now. There's no lion that doesn't have another paladin that can pilot it in case something goes wrong." 

Hunk nodded agreement. "There are _so_ many reasons to have more than five paladins. Like, sick days? Vacations? Those days when you just really need to chill out and refuel?" 

Keith straightened, and for another moment he was clearly the black paladin. "I learned a lot in the time I was away," he said. "I learned that being a paladin stays with you. It doesn't go away just because you spend a few months or a few years without sitting in the pilot's seat." He looked around at each one of them, catching their eyes. "It doesn't matter who flies and who doesn't. We are all Voltron." 

Pidge felt that. She felt her bond with Green, and the way it was starting to feel like a bond with Romelle. 

Shiro smiled fondly at the current black paladin. He looked content to be listening rather than leading. He looked.... 

He looked like he was finally okay. 


End file.
